At Root Solutions, we work with many organizations that have missions vital to the health of our planet–cleaning up our oceans, combating climate change, or reducing consumption, to name a few. But we also know that every day, people are preoccupied with priorities, worries, and other messages, from advertisements, to financial or personal concerns, to calls for donations or support, and even other messages about the environment. And, even if an environmental message cuts through the noise and catapults into public awareness, behavior science (and experience) tells us that awareness is generally insufficient for producing lasting behavioral changes.

Root Solutions is here to ensure vital environmental messages become a priority. Good messages stand out, spread easily, resonate with the audience, align with the long-term environmental movement, and don’t just make people aware of an issue–they move the audience to action. Good, repeated messaging can even shift the values of society over time, and the relationship between society and the environment.

Whether you’re interested in augmenting your existing messages with cutting-edge behavior science research, evaluating the effectiveness of your messaging, or creating a new strategy because your messages aren’t taking you where you want to go, Root Solutions offers services that can help, including:

• Tailoring messages to your priority audience/s, whether they are consumers, park visitors, voters, business owners, policymakers, or your nonprofit partners
  • We help you define your priority audience and identify the groups within it that might respond differently to messages
  • We conduct primary and secondary research so that you can better understand which messages motivate and which impede action for your audience: this includes factors like their barriers and motivators to behaviors, the moral values and ideologies they hold, the people in their social networks they look up to the most, the identities that they value the most, their most pressing concerns (pool of worry), and the frames through which they currently understand the world
• Articulating your values and sticking to your zone of no-compromise
  • Even though messages should be tailored to an audience, it is equally important to make sure that you are speaking from your own values. That is, you don’t want to “water down” your values to try to appease your audience. Instead, we can help you find the values that you share with your audience.
  • If your issue is contentious, we can also help you identify the frames of your opposition, so that you can stick to your own language and avoid using theirs.

• Evaluating the effectiveness of your current message frames to see if they’re meeting your short-term and long-term goals
  • We help you determine whether your existing messaging is effectively doing what you need it to do, by evaluating it directly with your priority audience.
• Identifying and tailoring the right frames for your issue and your audience
  
  • Whether you want to see what alternatives are out there, are seeking to establish a new voice on a new issue, or are looking to augment your existing messaging, we can help you find what messages are already being used, and adapt them to your specific needs (and the needs of your audience).
  • From national security to public health to environmental justice, the way you frame your environmental issue is essential to whether it is heard by your audience, and whether it moves them to long-term action. We can help you identify and evaluate the many ways that your issue has been characterized to find the frame that best fits you.
  • We can help you find and create metaphors, which are excellent tools for explaining complex events and processes. Metaphors root unfamiliar concepts like climate change or ocean acidification in familiar events and processes, like the workings of the human body. Good metaphors increase understanding, inoculate against misinformation, and allow the message to spread rapidly via audience members. Root Solutions can help identify, create, and test metaphors that adhere to best practices.
  • Stories are far superior to facts and statistics when it comes to creating messaging that works. Root Solutions can help you collect and test compelling stories from persuasive messengers that work for your audience.

• Message testing
  • Even with all the secondary audience research in the world, it is impossible to predict exactly how a message will land. Instead of guessing, Root Solutions can test messages using focus groups, surveys, and/or other primary research methods to reveal the frames that work best with your audience.

• Aligning with the long-term environmental movement / aligning short and long term goals:
  • Some short-term environmental messages tend to emphasize extrinsic reasons to protect the environment, by focusing on economic growth or treating the environment as a commodity to be bought and sold. Though these frames can be extremely effective for some audiences, they can also impede the frames that focus on intrinsic reasons to protect the environment, like the frame that we are all stewards of our shared (not purchased) environment. To achieve a long-term shift, we need to emphasize and strengthen these intrinsic values.
  • We can help you navigate this complex balance, finding the frames that prompt short-term action for your audience without impeding long-term change.

We must not assume we know why our audience is performing undesirable behaviors or what would drive them to adopt our desired behaviors. We must find that out from the audience directly. 

Root Solutions specializes in an evidence-based method for understanding and measuring your audience’s behavioral drivers – called a Behavioral Drivers Analysis (BDA). A BDA is a systematic tool that uses in-depth surveys and interviews to uncover your audience’s significant barriers and motivators, and more importantly, the statistically significant differences between people that do the behavior and those that do not. It also allows us to uncover barriers and motivators that are often hidden from the audience themselves. This allows you to design solutions that directly target the real problems and sticking points and also to design solutions that will truly motivate your audience. 

There is rarely a one-size-fits-all approach for messages, initiatives, and campaigns. Root Solutions can help you segment your audience by a range of meaningful (those most likely to influence how the audience might respond) and practical characteristics.  We can help you determine whether you should segment your audience based on values, likelihood of adoption, preparedness to act, common demographics, or other factors. 

We design behavior change programs ranging from single interventions to multi-year programs that include experimentation, piloting, targeting multiple audiences and behaviors, and considering scaling from the onset. We employ the results from audience research to determine the best intervention choice (i.e. which interventions will overcome barriers and synergize with bright spots) using our Behavioral Building Blocks™ framework. We believe in rapidly prototyping interventions to optimize their success and prevent expensive roll-out of campaigns not likely to succeed.

Different research methods are best employed at different stages of the Making Shift Happen process. Which tools we use and which types of data we collect depends on where the gaps are in your understanding of the environmental problem, your priority audience, and your audience’s behavior. We commonly use these primary research methods:

• Observation: Non-intrusive monitoring of the audience in a natural setting
• Survey: A fixed series of questions posed to participants
• Interview: A structured conversation with the participant
• Focus group: A facilitated discussion with a small group of participants
• Experiment or quasi-experiment: Implementing and examining a change for the purpose of determining cause and effect